The Sleep of Blowflies

The shady side of the house
is subsumed by blowflies.
It is stinking hot and stormy
and they've stopped moving.


They might be asleep.
Or is blowfly sleep a torpor ?
The house is their corpse
in which eggs won't set,


maggots can't take. No
forensic kit gives clues. The stimuli
of heat and light disrupt
circadian manifests, the sense


of day and night. Memory?
Mushroom body writes
short-sleep lines, struggles
to calibrate sleep regulation


machinery. Opening
a door or window, blowflies
erupt to settle near
places of departure:


too quick for sleep? Resting,
waiting, malingering,
or an attempt to rescue
sleep lost in forensic


etymology, battling
to stay wide awake
in the dark, the swarm
   of isolation.

Letter to Frieda

Had a flashback tonight,
straight into the devilry
of an acid trip, a gold flake
rehabilitation of childhood,


where nature stripped colour
to components
and flowers insisted
on sparklers - nasturtiums -


too bright, pluperfect
eyes open, blackness
machinate as the second person:
what am I trying to say here?


It's like paraphrasing song lyrics,
their goodness buried
under copyright. I've forgotten
the names of the birds


seen today, and even outlines
are fading away
from cities - this rain,
this little and less rain,


teasing seed still dry
in the ground,
picking at tracks
and wheel ruts,


would-be Godsend
whispering in that charged
kind-of-way: synapse
artery vein.